O.k., I´m ready for my daily dose of CTZ. Baphometrix, this is by far the best music production series I ever discovered on RUclips. And thanks, three day ago I asked for som low end advice an now we´ve got 1h 1o min full of tips. This will take me 4-5 hours to digest every little detail. I learned more about music production within the last two weeks than the 10 years before!
Baphy, u actually know wtf you're talking about. I've been using youtube to learn music since youtube was born, and in the world of music production/mixing/mastering, and I can confirm you actually GOATed 🐐 PhD level audio education, for free. Ppl pay over +150k in school fees only to barely comprehend this information from their institutions! Every video is a masterclass 👏
Baphy, thanks for making this series. I've been producing music for almost 20 years and this series is the first time a lot of things are actually clicking into place. Seriously life changing. If you have a patreon, paypal, or whatever, please let us know.
Baphometrix! Throughout the videos of yours that I've watched, you've consistently cleared up so many different things for me. Thank you so so much for doing this series man. There's so much I wish I'd known sooner; lots of strange claims (that I totally fell for) are no longer deluding me, thanks to you! I'm using clippers all the time now, and so far it has worked wonders for me.
Just to add to the subs part, if (for whatever reason) you 'FEEL' the need to low pass your subs (probably in a case where its harmonics annoy you, merged with other off key samples or whatever reason you may come up with) you could do that , but remember to still reintroduce your own harmonics back in (using saturation, distortion, excitement, etc. subs always gotta have harmonics for all the good reasons stated here in this video. Thanks Baph. You Rock!
Excellent information, another A1 class here. I really appreciate the in depth explanations and examples, I'd rather have something reiterated than an a quick surface level abbreviation.
This is a great video yet again. It's somewhat scientific to truly understand (concepts of wavelength [sub mode interaction with rooms], percived loudness, reflections, ambient reverb..etc) Fortunately I've been lucky enough to have a masters degree in mechanical engineering and understand the concepts before hand. However, this is a very good practical demonstration of quite complex science in an easy and palatable format that is easy for anybody to follow. Truly a masterclass for anybody serious about bass music mixing/mastering and is still a great refresher for those already well practiced with these concepts. Thanks a lot man
Ps: my methods for adding harmonics to subs are: 1 - Use additive synthesisers such as harmor, m sound factory. 2 - Use wavetable synthesis where you can control the harmonic content. (Sytrus, Vital, Phaseplant, Serum) 3 - Use any old synthesiser and add saturation (to keep phase intact) Avoid EQ's and filters on subs. Purely volume automation. Change the phase manually of added harmonics (additive or wavtable) to reduce crest/peakiness while retaining timbre and consistency if needed.
Thank you for the great advice ! I've been trying to implement your CTZ stuff for a bit, got lost and frustrated in the process but I think I'm starting to really understand how awesome the technique can be. Keep it up :)
This is exactly the type of video we needed. One where we highlight what to look for thats bad so we can learn what is bad. Im only 14mins in but I had to come write something to manifest my appreciation and like the video. I dont own VSX i have NX Germano and Abbey Roads and this will help me 'hear' better from now on in those plugins. Edit: after finishing the video... yep I guessed right loll
I honestly thought keeping a clean low passed sine was best for my sub while using the harmonics of my mid bass for low mids, this explains exactly why my low end sounds soo rough compared to my reference tracks on certain playback systems. Thank you soo much Baph!
Low end is really a big topic and is always discussed. There are as well so many "IFs" regarding genre, aesthetics, device and targeted audience. There are basic conditions, guidelines and good techniques, like you said, but with everything else, there is no general rule. That's something I learned after a while "There are no rules, there are techniques and you should know for what you have to listen to, to reach your goal". As you said a lot tutorials and workshops teach good techniques, but don't emphasize enough that these are only techniques. Thanks again for explaining that topic in such a detail. 🌻
There are rules and best practices that have built up over time. Some of them are genre-focused. It's always fine to **creatively** break the rules, but it's good to **know** the rules, why they exist, and to **understand** why you want to break them for creative reasons.
Hey Baphy, catching up slowly to the latest episodes...... Besides the usual top notch informations I like this episode a lot for Your "brrrr brrrrr" and "bbbbbrrrr bbbeessstrse"- sound impressions .... ;-)
Serious question about the Slate VSX IR of the Exchange club: Is it an IR of the club when it was full of people? Or empty? That would sound quite different, and I don't know how they could get hundreds of people in there to be dead silent to record an impulse. Very curious though.
@@Baphometrix I contacted them and their rep said it's an impulse from an empty room. Very hard to get a recording in a room full of people moving and breathing. So something to keep in mind. Still useful to me since I am usually playing in an empty club :D
difficult? Yes, impossible not, I have already sent mixes to be mastered in L.A. twice. with detailed work on bass done in a simple room and the engineers had no problem with the bass, there is no need for such a treated room, just being aware of where you are, what you have, using different headphones works very well and creating a system where seeing and hearing are balanced. good video, thanks.
at 29:13, you talk about harmonics on sub frequencies and how it removes the pumping effect between the relationship of the drums and the sub. This is occurring even with a standard NON-multiband sidechain, correct?
Hi Baphy, ,First thing First , congratulations for beeing the community's leader or corrector should i say !!! i could never be more thankful for your channel to simply exist !!! You re such a great teacher /obviouser (if that's even a word lol) and i fêel definitly secure to faollowing your contents , you add so much value to the big topic of production in itself!!! i am glad you're actually willing to share with the rest of the world ,that says so much. about your personnality!!! Plus you re giving us the right plugs to get ,preventing us of mistaking with aggressive marketing advertisements !!! i don't know what else to say iam nearly speechless but from the bottom of my heart... THANK YOU a million times man!!! And if that doesn't bother you , just let me ask you three very simple questions??? 1 i own Audified Mixchecker , do. you think. that can compete with slate vsx to apply the technic your are showing us now ??? 2 what is it thta you prefer in Bitwig over Ableton or any. athor daw for produciton wich i totally assume lol!!!. 3 And Lastly how can we exercize ourselves to know what to listen to ? Like in this case study i would say i hear the phase inconsistency like a signal that modulates how a filter automation would do but only in the sub to low mid register ... That's what i hear could i possibly be correct with that or am i totally missing the point ??? if you get any. chance to. respond i would like to thank you in advance
Great video Bap! Thanks again. I invested in some expensive headphones (not sure if I'm allowed to say company names in the comments these days) even the bad reviews said they had great low end. Definitely a great option for untreatable small rooms
You mentioned that you don't like to low pass subs because of the variation in harmonic information as you change notes, which makes total sense. However, wouldn't the same thing happen with the high passing of your midbasses?
Hey Baphy, this is awesome thanks! One question: how would you recommend pairing a sub with a neuro type mid bass, which might have strong fluctuations in the pitch, volume and phase of its fundamental? Probably don't want to filter the neuro bass completely and put in a flat sub, since that would remove a lot of low-end movement, but at the same time trying to low shelf the neuro bass and add in the sub could still cause a fair bit of phase issues. Some producers will make a sub which matches the fluctuations of the mid bass just by low passing the mid bass, but that seems to come with its own issues. Wondering if you had an approach for dealing with this kind of thing?
I'm not super well-versed in the Neuro genres, but my impression is that "it very much just depends". Yes, the mid basses tend to be wonky and complex (part of the appeal of the genre). I think the best way to answer this is to point out that in ALL bass music genres there are two different approaches to your subs. Disconnected or Synced. (my terminology) In the disconnected approach, your sub isn't trying to follow the rhythmic nor melodic pattern of the sequencing you're using for your mid-bass sounds and your lead sounds. The sub is instead following its own "counterpoint" type of rhythmic pattern and/or melody. And probably doing a lot of portamento sliding around in the sub region, to really help the air move the room modes around so that everyone can **feel** the power of the sub no matter where they are in the room. In the connected approach, your sub is in lockstep with the melody and rhythm of your midbasses (and leads). And in this approach you might decide to make a separate "clean" sub track (or several), and HPF the sub mostly out of all your mid basses and lead sounds. OR... for whatever reason, you're using only one or two main midbasses, etc. in your call-response patterns, and for whatever reason, the subs in those midbasses sound really tasty and they all work well together and it sounds coherent and nothing needs any problematic cleanup down in the extreme lows. In which case it's often easier/faster to just use those bass sounds as-is. As with all things in the dance genres... "it all depends". If there's a ton of unnecessary energy and phase interaction down in extreme lows, you might want to test how that will sound in a big club space, and you might want to test how loud that song can actually be, if a certain loudness target is important to you. If you find a problem in either regard, then you have to do **something** to clean up those extreme lows. It just all depends.
I’m not an expert but I would say ditch the sub in that case altogether and just tastefully use a sub generator plug-in to add whatever sub you want to the bass. The sub will be generated based on the material you’re feeding it.
Interesting topics. Same thing goes for 808s. usually shorter 808s with a shorter decay sounds better in club environments vs long sustained tails which can lead to the 808 to sound too boomy. It’s better to control your low end with some sort of envelope shaper than leave it ring out for too long
Great - and careful - information all around. It efficiently battles my sloppiness. The bass distorted when you increased the volume in Isol8 - on my end. Also, I can't enter your website unless I disable my adblocker? Big thumbs up and thank you for this series! I'm about half way through, but low end focus got my attention, so I had to watch it first. Kudos also for showing no prestige and appreciating being corrected.
Yeah, in hindsight, I simply should have boosted those audio segments in post. My goal was to make that very quiet information more audible by boosting it just under the point where distortion would occur on RUclips, but I overshot that by a wee bit in some places. It's hard to predict exactly where the really subby room emulations in VSX (or any such "correction/IR" software) will boost the spectrum in ways you cannot easily "see" in your upstream metering.
Do you know if there are any reference samples or techniques to reference individual tracks? Bc I have no clue how for example the kick and kick&Bass should sound on there own, while sample packs are misleading and reference tracks are mangled with other sounds
I revisited some old mixes to apply your aproach/strategy and man guess what, i was hitin -9 -8 lufs int easily! But what i noticed is that ctz mixes ended more “midrangy” when compared to old mixdowns! Is there a way to set the overall tonal balance when ctz ?
I think your perception of "more midrangey" might be based on a small sample size? Or the type of sound design choices or mixing decisions you're naturally drawn to? I'd need more information about what exactly you changed when redoing an old mix in a more CTZ manner. It might also be a simple thing you're hearing: clipping creates harmonics that mostly sit higher in the spectrum. Clip a sine wave at 200 Hz and you'll see a lot of energy added higher in the spectrum. So you might be perceiving the added "hotness" of the harmonics as "more midrangey", based on the specific tracks where you're introducing some clipping.
The first thing I encountered after experimenting with CTZ was that i had problems with achieving a good tonal balance. The CTZ method showed me that in my earlier mixes I wasnt hearing many tonal stuff at low levels and now they were exposed. CTZ is teaching me to EQ better now.
@@Baphometrix i removed any process and startet from scratch! I even did that without listening the mix at all, i did that on purpose so I don’t get any “nostalgia” sound in my brain!! Sat All faders at zero and started from there making sure gain staging follows ctz strategy! When finished i did and quick ab and that’s where i concluded about that tonal balance! The ctz mix is more powerul and more forward, louder even with static gain matching ! May be i overtired my ears or bcz i didn’t reference anything during mixing!
Hey will it be possible to put a download link for the kick and the sub ? I'd like to try listening with sienna vol E and dear Vr Monitor Club Emu . Thanks for the awesome video btw ;)
It will be kinda impractical for me, and probably not so useful to you, because the kick is coming out of a sampler with post processing, and the two subs are being generated in realtime from Initial Audio's 808 Studio II. Any bounce I could make wouldn't enable you to turn on/off the filters to AB different types of interaction, or to shorten/lengthen the kick in the same way as I do here. You should be able to pick any kick and any sub and examine how they interact (in Sienna and DearVR) using some of the techniques I tried to demonstrate. TONS of kicks are too long by default and should exhibit that same type of "rubbing" in any club environment emulation that highlights a sub-heavy playback system and typical messy large room reflections. And the type of "gapping" issue I demonstrated in the kick-duck on the sub should be easy to reproduce with any clean pure sine sub (no harmonics), vs nearly any slightly saturated sub that has harmonics similar to what I show in the video.
First try making them much shorter in length, like I show in this video. Find that length (for the sustain tail) where you get just a **hint** of the "boom" and it still feels low and fat and thick, but it's not actually ringing out for very long like in the original sample. And yeah, if it still feels "too much low end" try a gentle low shelf on the original kick to take the subby part down just a wee bit (but be careful not to overdo it and blur any transient punch and knock. Another thing you can try (alone or in combination with the foregoing) is to use a transient shaper plugin to simply reduce the amplitude/power of the kick's tail.
@@Baphometrix I'll preface my question by saying I realize that this is entirely context dependent and even subjective at times, but is there a "sweet spot" or even range when it comes to kick length in milliseconds? I"ve gotten comfortable hitting most kicks with a short-ish (~15-20 ms) fade on kick tails bringing them to roughly 110-120ms total in length, maybe some very slight transient shaping afterwards, but even then I feel like they get quite boomy in the car. It "scares" me to go shorter since I don't have an ideal listening environment to really tell how much subby punch I'm losing, but clearly I DO need to go shorter. Any tips in this regard?
@@50CalBeats The challenge is real. It's tricky to get this right if you cannot really hear the low end with enough detail. Typical small near-field monitors like most of us home producers use don't tell the story down there clear enough. A subpac is very helpful, but yes, they're quite hard to get your hands on one right now. And even really good headphones with a lot of sub energy are still... not quite there for really hearing those problems. Honestly the closest I've found to a low-cost "silver bullet" solution is either a subpac, or Slate VSX. (Or maybe something similar to Slate VSX--I'm not trying to shill for Slate.) I know that even Slate VSX might seem pricey, but it's still WAY cheaper than a pair of big far-field monitors and finding a good room to put them in and then treating that room properly.....
Question, Sir: Could you emulate Slate VSX with a convolution reverb and a bit of conscious eq? I know it won't be exact, but with a little common sense, maybe we could sculpt our rooms as effect chains, at least until I can afford a sub or the VSX package? Do you think that is possible if I do it with enough tact and sense and perfect it over time?
I mean.... maybe? But it seems (to me) a lot simpler to just buy a tool that has been modeled by pros and created for this purpose. There's a lot of moving parts to emulation software like VSX or Sienna, etc.
@@serapheogen I've heard good things about "Sienna" by Acustica Audio. But it will still run you something like $150 for the base module and then another $150 for the module with the two clubs in it.
@@serapheogen There's no denying that the build quality is "meh" on these. But that will be fixed soon when they introduce the metal headbands. Slate will replace them no questions asked if they crack on you. Me? I'm a little tricksy and I have done some things to preemptively reinforce them in a way that should prevent them from ever snapping on me. They sound really good, and are super comfortable. More comfortable than my Sennheiser HD 650s. And yes, I use them start to finish. I also listen to my reference playlists all day through VSX. I have a video about how to listen to lossless Deezer HiFi FLAC streaming through VSX (on Windows).
@@serapheogen The sound quality is there. They have an HD 650 emulation built into VSX. It sounds identical to mine. They also have an M50x emulation built in. And two Audeze emulations. There's a Slate video showing producer A-Bing his Audeze vs the VSX emulation of the Audeze, saying surprisedly "it sounds identical". And so on.
@@Baphometrix Sienna is excellent. I have used it in a very similar way to how you use VSX for a long time now. It's cheaper initially, but in order to have more emulations, you need to buy more packs at around $100 a time. So if you want certain emulations (e.g. the club), you have to pay for them. It probably works out to be around the same price as VSX in the end, but you don't get any headphones.
Baphometrix - simple question - instead of hi-passing things, does low-shelfing the low-end (decreasing volume of low-end) cause any phase-shifting? Is there any benefit to avoiding the hipass and reaching for a low-shelf instead that has a dramatic reduction (6db or more in reduction)?
If you can get the job done with a low shelf, it's always "better" and more gentle than using an HPF. A low shelf **does** cause some phase shift. ALL minimum phase EQ filter shapes cause **some** phase shift. Or more accurately, we induce specific types of phase shift to create that EQ shape and boost/cut.
Hey -- so, if you were using a plugin like Kick 2 (which allows you to sculpt the kick very precisely), could you theoretically afford yourself a long tail provided you make sure the pitch drop is over in say, the first 100ms of the kick?
That's an incredibly long pitch drop. At 128 BPM, a quarter note is 468 ms. You need to leave room for other sounds during the duration of any quarter note where the kick hits. In the project above, that original LONG kick sample is 215 ms long. The shortened version of the kick is 130 ms long. At the end of the day, it just depend on the kick. Every kick is different.
@@Baphometrix Thank you, yes -- I appreciate that would be quite a long pitch drop! I suppose I was thinking in a purely theoretical realm here, and wondering if, technically, the key to avoiding a 'woofy' or 'rubby' kick on a club system lies with the length pitch drop itself, rather than the actual sinusoidal tail of the kick. I absolutely wouldn't have my main kick with a drop like that haha.
@@AmourSynthetique It's an interesting avenue of exploration, but part of what makes a kick sound "like a bass drum" is that very pitch drop. So I think this is why dance producers tend to simply use shorter, more knocky kicks.
This way works if you’re not getting any stereo signal through your low end right? If you have a mid range sound that is stereo with some low range naturally how would you cut out your sides to not mud the sub? Or should your mid range always be mono?
Don't overthink the mid-side aspects of this. The only reason to mess with the mid-side balance of a sound (or to "mono the low end" of a sound) is to improve correlation **just enough** so that the sound doesn't "disappear" when the song is played on a full mono system. Your sub and your kick live firmly in the center down in the low end. If anything, you want your midbasses sitting out slightly wider in the stereo field so that they aren't fighting with the sub and kick in the center down there in the low end. Maybe wait for my episode coming up about "considerations about stereo field placement"?
I think that using the term short kicks in "loud" genres is overreaching a bit. I think the better way to describe it is that a short kick is better served for a faster tempo song. I could hear that kick was a bit flammy without any sort of impulse from VSX applied to it. I only say this because the tip you listed seems a bit obstructive in my mind. If the song calls for a flammy kind of "double kick" then you should absolutely keep the original sample. In your case however, it was way too much and you had the right idea. I think it's important to avoid music sounding overly clinical, I think that's one of the biggest issues I've observed in modern music.
These are are fair points. I know that in Techno, especially, where the kick drum is a major sound of interest, it's more common for producers to use longer kick samples that might reach a full 1/8th note in length and might contain that "flam" aspect, as you call it. (However, there are plenty of 8th-note long kicks that do NOT have this "flam" aspect and sound great and tight and huge in a club--it all hinges on what type and how long of a pitch drop the kick contains.) But I'll counter-argue that making a big, woofy "rumble kick" results in (subjectively, IMO) "better-sounding" result that is tight and doesn't contain that annoying gritty phasing rub. Check out the link to the Underdog video about making rumble kicks that I've got in the pinned post here. Again, though, we get into some very subjective territory here. There aren't necessarily "rights" and "wrongs" here. The main intent of this video was to wake up the newer producers who might have NO idea what a lot of long 8th-note kick samples might actually sound like in a club setting.
Great video! I still use my Subpac with VSX. With VSX, the feeling of subbass on the face is not enough -- I can more accurately judge the strength/power/hardness of the subbass by feeling it go through my torso with a Subpac. I also prefer the Subpac S1. The smaller and newer versions don't have enough area coverage on my back.
@@Baphometrix You're welcome! With the Subpac version I have, I found a good baseline was when I set mine at 50%. Then I know at 80 dBs Slow C-Weighted volume from my speakers, that's the best average subbass position I want from most songs at that volume. A mixture of Bruno Mars' 24K Magic, Skrillex RockNRoll, rock, metal, HipHop, R&B, some heavy kick trance songs, and Knife Party songs helped me decide on that Subpac position. I keep the Subpac at that position when I use VSX as well. That was the max position to set the Subpac at -- because most of the music with "perfect" or near-perfect subbass levels feel their best at 50% (when they are at equal loudness and being used as references to whatever I'm mixing/mastering). The "right" level of subbass at a song at 78-80 dBFS should feel like a nice warm hug. Use Bruno Mars' 24K magic as a reference for that. It shouldn't jar the hell out of you, or vibrate your teeth, or make you fatigued or nauseous if you play that song a lot. It should feel like a nice comfortable slightly heavy pressure "hitting" you. I know HipHop and Bass Heavy music will also hit a little harder than other songs at that position. Your max percent may vary. I've got the second version so I can set it up and test it if you're having trouble trying to find a good setting to use all the time. Of course, when I'm just casually listening, or I just don't need it, I'll turn it down. The audio from my PC goes out from my RME HDSPE AIO Pro card by the SPDIF Toslink output through a shielded optical cable , into my DAC, and then from a balanced cable into my Subpac, then it is out through a shielded XLR cable into my iLOUD MTM speakers, or from the Subpac out to my VSX headphones. I've talked with Subpac support in the past on the best way do this setup, and it works for me and no one has complained about my work being translated incorrectly. One thing for sure, with the Subpac, and the VSX Club/ExtraBass, you can feel how short kicks should be in fast songs, and whether there is too much subbass rumble in mixes. Someone said there is a 3ms latency with the Subpac and VSX headphones, and I think there is a little bit, but it hasn't interfered with my timing kicks to the beats of a song properly.
@@Jrel Great detailed info, thank you! Yeah, I heard 2nd hand about possible latency with VSX and that's one reason I haven't yet pulled out the subpac to try alongside VSX. And yeah, isn't that Club emulation just incredibly useful?
@@Baphometrix Yes definitely. One thing to note if you care about stereo subs in the Club only, the right side subbass region is slightly louder than the left side, I think it was 1 dB at least. I asked them to fix it, but the dev stated that is exactly how it is in the club so they left it as is, and also something about it falls within the 1-3 dB range of something(error? correction?). In the other emulations (none specified by the dev), the low end has been mono'd. I'm guessing they mean below 40 Hz. I don't recall the frequency range in the club I had complained about. I do know it was messing up my perception of the subbass though. It still baffles me they didn't "fix" it.
@@Jrel Good to know. I guess it bothers me less because I don't expect any **emulation** that's IR-based to be perfect? I just expect them to be representational enough--close enough--to highlight the typical problems you'd encounter in the environment being emulated. While I do spend a lot of time producing and mixing on the Barefoot mid-fields in "Stephen's Mix Room", and also on those really fat Pelonis far-fields in the relatively dry-sounding "Archon Studio", I also still check a lot of stuff in the HD Linear bypass mode. Those three modes sound relatively "natural/good" to me, and show most of the detail I'm concerned about most of the time. All the other models I tend to flip through just to listen for things that stick out and are highlighted as problematic.
I haven't tried them because I disagree with their design philosophy. All of the "mix environment emulation" plugins like these are based in part on IR modeling (like in a convolution reverb). They're also trying to simulate some degree of timing-based intra-aural perception (of both speakers PLUS the room reflections) inside of your very binaural headphones. They're never going to be **perfect**. The reason I decided to try Slate VSX is because they're the only such solution out there that is built around the characteristics of the headphone itself. VSX comes with matching headphones. The models are designed to sound "correct" in THOSE headphones. By contrast, all the other similar plugins by Waves, etc. are not matched to the characteristics of any one headphone. A simulated room/speaker in those other plugs will sound VERY different depending on which exactly headphone model you're wearing. So how accurately can their emulations really be? How accurately can you trust the problem areas they're trying to highlight with each emulation?
VSX looks amazing. I'm curious if you still use your pre-VSX studio headphones at all? I saw in a comment you now use the slate headphones from the start to end of a mix, but what about the production part? Or even listening to music/audio outside of production?
I exclusively work through the VSX system now. My HS8 monitors, my 10-inch subwoofer, and my Subpac have all been sitting in a closet for 9 months now, and I don't miss them at all.
She/her. I'm transgender female. But... I use **mostly** my old male voice and cadence and emphasis for these videos because sadly there's still a male bias in the technical audio world and in the producer world. Ask any woman in any engineering discipline how often they get sidelined by the guys in the room because of an unconscious bias that engineering is a man's game. I hold my ground in technical professions by talking and debating like the guys do. Meanwhile, I don't mind when people here on RUclips assume I'm a guy. My gender is irrelevant on RUclips. My ideas are all that matter.
@@Baphometrix ohh okay. I kinda thought that was the case but didn't want to assume anything. The male bias is a sad thing. Hope you get to be yourself soon in these fantastic videos.
@@teknobryan Ah. You can make a "big sounding" kick that is also fairly short in duration and doesn't have a long tail that will reverberate and cause that comb-filtered "swell up" sound I pointed out in this video. The trick is to find that length in the subby tail portion where you're getting just enough of the "hint" of the boom/thud to **imply** the sense of bigness. Or you can just not give a crap. Or you can decide that you **like** the sound of a big huge long washy kick that makes weird textures in a big reverberant space like a club. The main thing is to be aware that a kick that sounds really tight and fat and heavy on your 6-inch nearfields in your home studio might sound VERY different on big stacks in a club. And it might behoove you to know what that's going to sound like. So you can make an informed decision about how to sound-design that kick and how to mix that kick. Or to reach for a different kick instead.
Because that's a terrible practice. You really want to be careful with HP filters down in your low end. They affect the sub region ABOVE the filter point at 20 Hz in a variety of bad, undesirable ways. Even if you use a linear phase HPF. The only legit reason to use an HPF down somewhere in the sub/bass region is when you're recording midrange instruments or vocals, and your goal is to reduce the amount of ambient "rumble" that is included in the recorded signal.
@@Baphometrix Yeah, I learned the kick-fading trick kind of by accident trying this. Kick drum was lasting too long and I was getting that "rubbing" you were talking about in the video, so I tried high-passing the low-end of the kick to clean that area up and was met with some unbelievable filter ringing that actually extended the tail on the kick rather than cutting it. So, I just faded off the tail of the sample instead and it cleared everything up. Glad to see that information being more propagated, I'm part of a lot of amateur producer communities and you wouldn't believe how often I hear ringing, elongated kicks putting uncomfortable pressure on the low end of the mix, and it's like... low-frequency pressure but with no resolution. It just sounds totally oppressive; the kick-fading trick is far cleaner and higher-fidelity by comparison. Good job on these videos, I can't wait to see more, I do have more questions about the CTZ process from my own testing but I'mma wait for them to be answered by the videos you have planned. Great content! ^^;
@@shinon_shn Yep! That's an excellent anecdote and is **exactly** what happens all too often. Especially given the popular (but very WRONG) advice, IMO, to just reflexively slap a 20 HZ HPF on a bus or 2bus mix (or even on individual tracks).
@@Baphometrix what about using a double stacked 12db/oct filter to still get a 24db cutoff but without a 3db boost at the region? I figure that still won’t counter the ringing but it wouldn’t cause a boost?
@@Baphometrix What if there is excessive amount of information in that bottom end that I want to reduce when I am otherwise very satisfied with the timbre of my sub/kick? Would you recommend shelving rather than filtering?
These videos are like a masterclass - forbidden knowledge almost. Thank You!
O.k., I´m ready for my daily dose of CTZ. Baphometrix, this is by far the best music production series I ever discovered on RUclips. And thanks, three day ago I asked for som low end advice an now we´ve got 1h 1o min full of tips. This will take me 4-5 hours to digest every little detail. I learned more about music production within the last two weeks than the 10 years before!
I'm on a huge binge of your channel. The amount of information you are giving out is insane. Love what you're doing man
Baphy, u actually know wtf you're talking about. I've been using youtube to learn music since youtube was born, and in the world of music production/mixing/mastering, and I can confirm you actually GOATed 🐐
PhD level audio education, for free. Ppl pay over +150k in school fees only to barely comprehend this information from their institutions!
Every video is a masterclass 👏
You’re the reason I have RUclips notifications enabled!
Yessss sir
I’ve been producing for over 20 years. I found this super helpful!
The knowledge you impart to us is invaluable. Thank you so much for everything you do. I'm so glad I found your channel!
I'm no doubt baphy addict for sure 🙂. My best mentor ever in this game . Be blessed.
You videos are quite useful but this one exceeds them all. Simply GOLD!
Baphy, thanks for making this series. I've been producing music for almost 20 years and this series is the first time a lot of things are actually clicking into place. Seriously life changing. If you have a patreon, paypal, or whatever, please let us know.
Baphometrix! Throughout the videos of yours that I've watched, you've consistently cleared up so many different things for me. Thank you so so much for doing this series man. There's so much I wish I'd known sooner; lots of strange claims (that I totally fell for) are no longer deluding me, thanks to you! I'm using clippers all the time now, and so far it has worked wonders for me.
Just to add to the subs part, if (for whatever reason) you 'FEEL' the need to low pass your subs (probably in a case where its harmonics annoy you, merged with other off key samples or whatever reason you may come up with) you could do that , but remember to still reintroduce your own harmonics back in (using saturation, distortion, excitement, etc. subs always gotta have harmonics for all the good reasons stated here in this video. Thanks Baph. You Rock!
Excellent information, another A1 class here. I really appreciate the in depth explanations and examples, I'd rather have something reiterated than an a quick surface level abbreviation.
This is a great video yet again. It's somewhat scientific to truly understand (concepts of wavelength [sub mode interaction with rooms], percived loudness, reflections, ambient reverb..etc) Fortunately I've been lucky enough to have a masters degree in mechanical engineering and understand the concepts before hand. However, this is a very good practical demonstration of quite complex science in an easy and palatable format that is easy for anybody to follow. Truly a masterclass for anybody serious about bass music mixing/mastering and is still a great refresher for those already well practiced with these concepts.
Thanks a lot man
Ps: my methods for adding harmonics to subs are:
1 - Use additive synthesisers such as harmor, m sound factory.
2 - Use wavetable synthesis where you can control the harmonic content. (Sytrus, Vital, Phaseplant, Serum)
3 - Use any old synthesiser and add saturation (to keep phase intact)
Avoid EQ's and filters on subs.
Purely volume automation.
Change the phase manually of added harmonics (additive or wavtable) to reduce crest/peakiness while retaining timbre and consistency if needed.
Guilty of always low passing my subs between 100 - 150hz. I'd never thought to consider all that harmonic content that I'm sacrificing. Thank you!
So great-full for your generosity! Thank you for your time. Your content is invaluable.
Thank you for the great advice ! I've been trying to implement your CTZ stuff for a bit, got lost and frustrated in the process but I think I'm starting to really understand how awesome the technique can be. Keep it up :)
You're such a great teacher.
Really great episode, Baphy!! My favorite so far…
Bass management is always the trickiest part of mixing for me.
Tons of useful informations, big big thanks!
Awesome stuff, Baphy, keep em coming!
This is exactly the type of video we needed. One where we highlight what to look for thats bad so we can learn what is bad. Im only 14mins in but I had to come write something to manifest my appreciation and like the video. I dont own VSX i have NX Germano and Abbey Roads and this will help me 'hear' better from now on in those plugins.
Edit: after finishing the video... yep I guessed right loll
thank you for the lessons you gave for free for us as novice producers...this is very useful for us
you are so good teaching, Baphometrix!
I honestly thought keeping a clean low passed sine was best for my sub while using the harmonics of my mid bass for low mids, this explains exactly why my low end sounds soo rough compared to my reference tracks on certain playback systems. Thank you soo much Baph!
Low end is really a big topic and is always discussed. There are as well so many "IFs" regarding genre, aesthetics, device and targeted audience. There are basic conditions, guidelines and good techniques, like you said, but with everything else, there is no general rule. That's something I learned after a while "There are no rules, there are techniques and you should know for what you have to listen to, to reach your goal". As you said a lot tutorials and workshops teach good techniques, but don't emphasize enough that these are only techniques. Thanks again for explaining that topic in such a detail. 🌻
There are rules and best practices that have built up over time. Some of them are genre-focused. It's always fine to **creatively** break the rules, but it's good to **know** the rules, why they exist, and to **understand** why you want to break them for creative reasons.
Hey baphometrix, when i'm listenings lf at around @29.00 i hear distortion and clicks, is that a good example of youtube compression?
That 29:40 part blew my mind. Such a good example of how the harmonics are actually needed to be there!
Hey Baphy, catching up slowly to the latest episodes...... Besides the usual top notch informations I like this episode a lot for Your "brrrr brrrrr" and "bbbbbrrrr bbbeessstrse"- sound impressions .... ;-)
cool demonstration of the bass reflections!
Highly detailed and informative. Thank you very much!
Serious question about the Slate VSX IR of the Exchange club: Is it an IR of the club when it was full of people? Or empty? That would sound quite different, and I don't know how they could get hundreds of people in there to be dead silent to record an impulse. Very curious though.
I'm not sure. Good question for Slate.
@@Baphometrix I contacted them and their rep said it's an impulse from an empty room. Very hard to get a recording in a room full of people moving and breathing. So something to keep in mind. Still useful to me since I am usually playing in an empty club :D
@@jeffreyjbyron That's really helpful to know. Thanks so much for following up and sharing that info!
@@Baphometrix I wish we could create our own IRs!
difficult? Yes, impossible not, I have already sent mixes to be mastered in L.A. twice. with detailed work on bass done in a simple room and the engineers had no problem with the bass, there is no need for such a treated room, just being aware of where you are, what you have, using different headphones works very well and creating a system where seeing and hearing are balanced. good video, thanks.
at 29:13, you talk about harmonics on sub frequencies and how it removes the pumping effect between the relationship of the drums and the sub. This is occurring even with a standard NON-multiband sidechain, correct?
Just watched one more minute in and you answered the question. Awesome vids homie I can't thank u enough :)
Another great video! Your descriptions are super useful 👊🏽❤️
Hi Baphy,
,First thing First ,
congratulations for beeing the community's leader or corrector should i say !!! i could never be more thankful for your channel to simply exist !!!
You re such a great teacher /obviouser (if that's even a word lol) and i fêel definitly secure to faollowing your contents , you add so much value to the big topic of production in itself!!!
i am glad you're actually willing to share with the rest of the world ,that says so much. about your personnality!!!
Plus you re giving us the right plugs to get ,preventing us of mistaking with aggressive marketing advertisements !!! i don't know what else to say iam nearly speechless but from the bottom of my heart...
THANK YOU a million times man!!!
And if that doesn't bother you , just let me ask you three very simple questions???
1 i own Audified Mixchecker , do. you think. that can compete with slate vsx to apply the technic your are showing us now ???
2 what is it thta you prefer in Bitwig over Ableton or any. athor daw for produciton wich i totally assume lol!!!.
3 And Lastly how can we exercize ourselves to know what to listen to ? Like in this case study i would say i hear the phase inconsistency like a signal that modulates how a filter automation would do but only in the sub to low mid register ... That's what i hear could i possibly be correct with that or am i totally missing the point ???
if you get any. chance to. respond i would like to thank you in advance
This series is on par with Breaking bad.
My name is.....
Great video Bap! Thanks again. I invested in some expensive headphones (not sure if I'm allowed to say company names in the comments these days) even the bad reviews said they had great low end. Definitely a great option for untreatable small rooms
Baphy, you're the best.
You mentioned that you don't like to low pass subs because of the variation in harmonic information as you change notes, which makes total sense. However, wouldn't the same thing happen with the high passing of your midbasses?
This is like a holy grail type tutorial
At 23:59 what is going on with the cents of the notes of your sub, some kind of intonation?
Great info. I enjoyed this episode. Thank you
Hey Baphy, this is awesome thanks! One question: how would you recommend pairing a sub with a neuro type mid bass, which might have strong fluctuations in the pitch, volume and phase of its fundamental? Probably don't want to filter the neuro bass completely and put in a flat sub, since that would remove a lot of low-end movement, but at the same time trying to low shelf the neuro bass and add in the sub could still cause a fair bit of phase issues. Some producers will make a sub which matches the fluctuations of the mid bass just by low passing the mid bass, but that seems to come with its own issues. Wondering if you had an approach for dealing with this kind of thing?
I'm not super well-versed in the Neuro genres, but my impression is that "it very much just depends". Yes, the mid basses tend to be wonky and complex (part of the appeal of the genre). I think the best way to answer this is to point out that in ALL bass music genres there are two different approaches to your subs. Disconnected or Synced. (my terminology)
In the disconnected approach, your sub isn't trying to follow the rhythmic nor melodic pattern of the sequencing you're using for your mid-bass sounds and your lead sounds. The sub is instead following its own "counterpoint" type of rhythmic pattern and/or melody. And probably doing a lot of portamento sliding around in the sub region, to really help the air move the room modes around so that everyone can **feel** the power of the sub no matter where they are in the room.
In the connected approach, your sub is in lockstep with the melody and rhythm of your midbasses (and leads). And in this approach you might decide to make a separate "clean" sub track (or several), and HPF the sub mostly out of all your mid basses and lead sounds. OR... for whatever reason, you're using only one or two main midbasses, etc. in your call-response patterns, and for whatever reason, the subs in those midbasses sound really tasty and they all work well together and it sounds coherent and nothing needs any problematic cleanup down in the extreme lows. In which case it's often easier/faster to just use those bass sounds as-is.
As with all things in the dance genres... "it all depends". If there's a ton of unnecessary energy and phase interaction down in extreme lows, you might want to test how that will sound in a big club space, and you might want to test how loud that song can actually be, if a certain loudness target is important to you. If you find a problem in either regard, then you have to do **something** to clean up those extreme lows. It just all depends.
@@Baphometrix Thanks that's a really great answer!
I’m not an expert but I would say ditch the sub in that case altogether and just tastefully use a sub generator plug-in to add whatever sub you want to the bass. The sub will be generated based on the material you’re feeding it.
thanks for info about the gap....had this issue for ages when sidechaining.
Interesting topics. Same thing goes for 808s. usually shorter 808s with a shorter decay sounds better in club environments vs long sustained tails which can lead to the 808 to sound too boomy. It’s better to control your low end with some sort of envelope shaper than leave it ring out for too long
Great - and careful - information all around. It efficiently battles my sloppiness. The bass distorted when you increased the volume in Isol8 - on my end. Also, I can't enter your website unless I disable my adblocker? Big thumbs up and thank you for this series! I'm about half way through, but low end focus got my attention, so I had to watch it first. Kudos also for showing no prestige and appreciating being corrected.
Yeah, in hindsight, I simply should have boosted those audio segments in post. My goal was to make that very quiet information more audible by boosting it just under the point where distortion would occur on RUclips, but I overshot that by a wee bit in some places. It's hard to predict exactly where the really subby room emulations in VSX (or any such "correction/IR" software) will boost the spectrum in ways you cannot easily "see" in your upstream metering.
Great video again, just wonder, is it RUclips that distort your voice in the video or is your mic bad or clipping?. Best/Mathias
I'm probably running my vocal chain a bit hot.
@@Baphometrix maybe to many clippers😉🍺. Love your videos. Best/Mathias
Do you know if there are any reference samples or techniques to reference individual tracks? Bc I have no clue how for example the kick and kick&Bass should sound on there own, while sample packs are misleading and reference tracks are mangled with other sounds
Separate the drums using Ultimate Vocal Remover and then you can hear just the kick and snare from a song
I revisited some old mixes to apply your aproach/strategy and man guess what, i was hitin -9 -8 lufs int easily! But what i noticed is that ctz mixes ended more “midrangy” when compared to old mixdowns! Is there a way to set the overall tonal balance when ctz ?
I think your perception of "more midrangey" might be based on a small sample size? Or the type of sound design choices or mixing decisions you're naturally drawn to? I'd need more information about what exactly you changed when redoing an old mix in a more CTZ manner. It might also be a simple thing you're hearing: clipping creates harmonics that mostly sit higher in the spectrum. Clip a sine wave at 200 Hz and you'll see a lot of energy added higher in the spectrum. So you might be perceiving the added "hotness" of the harmonics as "more midrangey", based on the specific tracks where you're introducing some clipping.
The first thing I encountered after experimenting with CTZ was that i had problems with achieving a good tonal balance. The CTZ method showed me that in my earlier mixes I wasnt hearing many tonal stuff at low levels and now they were exposed. CTZ is teaching me to EQ better now.
@@Baphometrix i removed any process and startet from scratch! I even did that without listening the mix at all, i did that on purpose so I don’t get any “nostalgia” sound in my brain!! Sat All faders at zero and started from there making sure gain staging follows ctz strategy! When finished i did and quick ab and that’s where i concluded about that tonal balance! The ctz mix is more powerul and more forward, louder even with static gain matching ! May be i overtired my ears or bcz i didn’t reference anything during mixing!
Hey will it be possible to put a download link for the kick and the sub ? I'd like to try listening with sienna vol E and dear Vr Monitor Club Emu . Thanks for the awesome video btw ;)
It will be kinda impractical for me, and probably not so useful to you, because the kick is coming out of a sampler with post processing, and the two subs are being generated in realtime from Initial Audio's 808 Studio II. Any bounce I could make wouldn't enable you to turn on/off the filters to AB different types of interaction, or to shorten/lengthen the kick in the same way as I do here. You should be able to pick any kick and any sub and examine how they interact (in Sienna and DearVR) using some of the techniques I tried to demonstrate. TONS of kicks are too long by default and should exhibit that same type of "rubbing" in any club environment emulation that highlights a sub-heavy playback system and typical messy large room reflections. And the type of "gapping" issue I demonstrated in the kick-duck on the sub should be easy to reproduce with any clean pure sine sub (no harmonics), vs nearly any slightly saturated sub that has harmonics similar to what I show in the video.
My kick samples always seem to have way too much low end (trap / drill)
Should I just eq them? Multiband compress them?
First try making them much shorter in length, like I show in this video. Find that length (for the sustain tail) where you get just a **hint** of the "boom" and it still feels low and fat and thick, but it's not actually ringing out for very long like in the original sample. And yeah, if it still feels "too much low end" try a gentle low shelf on the original kick to take the subby part down just a wee bit (but be careful not to overdo it and blur any transient punch and knock. Another thing you can try (alone or in combination with the foregoing) is to use a transient shaper plugin to simply reduce the amplitude/power of the kick's tail.
@@Baphometrix I'll preface my question by saying I realize that this is entirely context dependent and even subjective at times, but is there a "sweet spot" or even range when it comes to kick length in milliseconds? I"ve gotten comfortable hitting most kicks with a short-ish (~15-20 ms) fade on kick tails bringing them to roughly 110-120ms total in length, maybe some very slight transient shaping afterwards, but even then I feel like they get quite boomy in the car. It "scares" me to go shorter since I don't have an ideal listening environment to really tell how much subby punch I'm losing, but clearly I DO need to go shorter. Any tips in this regard?
@@50CalBeats The challenge is real. It's tricky to get this right if you cannot really hear the low end with enough detail. Typical small near-field monitors like most of us home producers use don't tell the story down there clear enough. A subpac is very helpful, but yes, they're quite hard to get your hands on one right now. And even really good headphones with a lot of sub energy are still... not quite there for really hearing those problems. Honestly the closest I've found to a low-cost "silver bullet" solution is either a subpac, or Slate VSX. (Or maybe something similar to Slate VSX--I'm not trying to shill for Slate.) I know that even Slate VSX might seem pricey, but it's still WAY cheaper than a pair of big far-field monitors and finding a good room to put them in and then treating that room properly.....
Question, Sir: Could you emulate Slate VSX with a convolution reverb and a bit of conscious eq? I know it won't be exact, but with a little common sense, maybe we could sculpt our rooms as effect chains, at least until I can afford a sub or the VSX package? Do you think that is possible if I do it with enough tact and sense and perfect it over time?
I mean.... maybe? But it seems (to me) a lot simpler to just buy a tool that has been modeled by pros and created for this purpose. There's a lot of moving parts to emulation software like VSX or Sienna, etc.
@@serapheogen I've heard good things about "Sienna" by Acustica Audio. But it will still run you something like $150 for the base module and then another $150 for the module with the two clubs in it.
@@serapheogen There's no denying that the build quality is "meh" on these. But that will be fixed soon when they introduce the metal headbands. Slate will replace them no questions asked if they crack on you. Me? I'm a little tricksy and I have done some things to preemptively reinforce them in a way that should prevent them from ever snapping on me. They sound really good, and are super comfortable. More comfortable than my Sennheiser HD 650s.
And yes, I use them start to finish. I also listen to my reference playlists all day through VSX. I have a video about how to listen to lossless Deezer HiFi FLAC streaming through VSX (on Windows).
@@serapheogen The sound quality is there. They have an HD 650 emulation built into VSX. It sounds identical to mine. They also have an M50x emulation built in. And two Audeze emulations. There's a Slate video showing producer A-Bing his Audeze vs the VSX emulation of the Audeze, saying surprisedly "it sounds identical". And so on.
@@Baphometrix Sienna is excellent. I have used it in a very similar way to how you use VSX for a long time now. It's cheaper initially, but in order to have more emulations, you need to buy more packs at around $100 a time. So if you want certain emulations (e.g. the club), you have to pay for them. It probably works out to be around the same price as VSX in the end, but you don't get any headphones.
Great videos! I've been working my way through the series. What do you use to add harmonics to your sub bass?
Follow up question, how do you make sure all of your sub bass notes are even and at the same volume?
Big up Bapho
thanks for the gold nugget
Key points for me:
- highpass/lowshelf other elements always in conjunction with your bass sounds
- saturate what might get lost
Yes sir!
BAPH IS ON FAYA!!!
Just wondering. Wouldn’t the overdrive (ableton stock plugin) work a bit similar way to spectre (with the settings adjusted correctly of course)?
Similar, but not identical.
Baphometrix - simple question - instead of hi-passing things, does low-shelfing the low-end (decreasing volume of low-end) cause any phase-shifting? Is there any benefit to avoiding the hipass and reaching for a low-shelf instead that has a dramatic reduction (6db or more in reduction)?
If you can get the job done with a low shelf, it's always "better" and more gentle than using an HPF. A low shelf **does** cause some phase shift. ALL minimum phase EQ filter shapes cause **some** phase shift. Or more accurately, we induce specific types of phase shift to create that EQ shape and boost/cut.
Baphomenal !
Damn, this has really helped
The OG Tweeter beater !✊🏽
So can you just buy the VSX software? Are you using the headphones that come with it?
Hey -- so, if you were using a plugin like Kick 2 (which allows you to sculpt the kick very precisely), could you theoretically afford yourself a long tail provided you make sure the pitch drop is over in say, the first 100ms of the kick?
That's an incredibly long pitch drop. At 128 BPM, a quarter note is 468 ms. You need to leave room for other sounds during the duration of any quarter note where the kick hits. In the project above, that original LONG kick sample is 215 ms long. The shortened version of the kick is 130 ms long. At the end of the day, it just depend on the kick. Every kick is different.
@@Baphometrix Thank you, yes -- I appreciate that would be quite a long pitch drop! I suppose I was thinking in a purely theoretical realm here, and wondering if, technically, the key to avoiding a 'woofy' or 'rubby' kick on a club system lies with the length pitch drop itself, rather than the actual sinusoidal tail of the kick. I absolutely wouldn't have my main kick with a drop like that haha.
@@AmourSynthetique It's an interesting avenue of exploration, but part of what makes a kick sound "like a bass drum" is that very pitch drop. So I think this is why dance producers tend to simply use shorter, more knocky kicks.
Good good... I learn amor with your video
ISOL8 is free folks, go get it!
This way works if you’re not getting any stereo signal through your low end right? If you have a mid range sound that is stereo with some low range naturally how would you cut out your sides to not mud the sub? Or should your mid range always be mono?
Don't overthink the mid-side aspects of this. The only reason to mess with the mid-side balance of a sound (or to "mono the low end" of a sound) is to improve correlation **just enough** so that the sound doesn't "disappear" when the song is played on a full mono system. Your sub and your kick live firmly in the center down in the low end. If anything, you want your midbasses sitting out slightly wider in the stereo field so that they aren't fighting with the sub and kick in the center down there in the low end. Maybe wait for my episode coming up about "considerations about stereo field placement"?
@@Baphometrix appreciate the reply thank you!
I think that using the term short kicks in "loud" genres is overreaching a bit. I think the better way to describe it is that a short kick is better served for a faster tempo song. I could hear that kick was a bit flammy without any sort of impulse from VSX applied to it. I only say this because the tip you listed seems a bit obstructive in my mind. If the song calls for a flammy kind of "double kick" then you should absolutely keep the original sample. In your case however, it was way too much and you had the right idea. I think it's important to avoid music sounding overly clinical, I think that's one of the biggest issues I've observed in modern music.
These are are fair points. I know that in Techno, especially, where the kick drum is a major sound of interest, it's more common for producers to use longer kick samples that might reach a full 1/8th note in length and might contain that "flam" aspect, as you call it. (However, there are plenty of 8th-note long kicks that do NOT have this "flam" aspect and sound great and tight and huge in a club--it all hinges on what type and how long of a pitch drop the kick contains.)
But I'll counter-argue that making a big, woofy "rumble kick" results in (subjectively, IMO) "better-sounding" result that is tight and doesn't contain that annoying gritty phasing rub. Check out the link to the Underdog video about making rumble kicks that I've got in the pinned post here.
Again, though, we get into some very subjective territory here. There aren't necessarily "rights" and "wrongs" here. The main intent of this video was to wake up the newer producers who might have NO idea what a lot of long 8th-note kick samples might actually sound like in a club setting.
Great video! I still use my Subpac with VSX. With VSX, the feeling of subbass on the face is not enough -- I can more accurately judge the strength/power/hardness of the subbass by feeling it go through my torso with a Subpac. I also prefer the Subpac S1. The smaller and newer versions don't have enough area coverage on my back.
Good to know! I might bring the subpac back now that I've gotten used to VSX alone. See how I feel about that. Appreciate your impressions!
@@Baphometrix You're welcome! With the Subpac version I have, I found a good baseline was when I set mine at 50%. Then I know at 80 dBs Slow C-Weighted volume from my speakers, that's the best average subbass position I want from most songs at that volume. A mixture of Bruno Mars' 24K Magic, Skrillex RockNRoll, rock, metal, HipHop, R&B, some heavy kick trance songs, and Knife Party songs helped me decide on that Subpac position. I keep the Subpac at that position when I use VSX as well. That was the max position to set the Subpac at -- because most of the music with "perfect" or near-perfect subbass levels feel their best at 50% (when they are at equal loudness and being used as references to whatever I'm mixing/mastering). The "right" level of subbass at a song at 78-80 dBFS should feel like a nice warm hug. Use Bruno Mars' 24K magic as a reference for that. It shouldn't jar the hell out of you, or vibrate your teeth, or make you fatigued or nauseous if you play that song a lot. It should feel like a nice comfortable slightly heavy pressure "hitting" you. I know HipHop and Bass Heavy music will also hit a little harder than other songs at that position. Your max percent may vary. I've got the second version so I can set it up and test it if you're having trouble trying to find a good setting to use all the time. Of course, when I'm just casually listening, or I just don't need it, I'll turn it down. The audio from my PC goes out from my RME HDSPE AIO Pro card by the SPDIF Toslink output through a shielded optical cable , into my DAC, and then from a balanced cable into my Subpac, then it is out through a shielded XLR cable into my iLOUD MTM speakers, or from the Subpac out to my VSX headphones. I've talked with Subpac support in the past on the best way do this setup, and it works for me and no one has complained about my work being translated incorrectly. One thing for sure, with the Subpac, and the VSX Club/ExtraBass, you can feel how short kicks should be in fast songs, and whether there is too much subbass rumble in mixes. Someone said there is a 3ms latency with the Subpac and VSX headphones, and I think there is a little bit, but it hasn't interfered with my timing kicks to the beats of a song properly.
@@Jrel Great detailed info, thank you! Yeah, I heard 2nd hand about possible latency with VSX and that's one reason I haven't yet pulled out the subpac to try alongside VSX. And yeah, isn't that Club emulation just incredibly useful?
@@Baphometrix Yes definitely. One thing to note if you care about stereo subs in the Club only, the right side subbass region is slightly louder than the left side, I think it was 1 dB at least. I asked them to fix it, but the dev stated that is exactly how it is in the club so they left it as is, and also something about it falls within the 1-3 dB range of something(error? correction?). In the other emulations (none specified by the dev), the low end has been mono'd. I'm guessing they mean below 40 Hz. I don't recall the frequency range in the club I had complained about. I do know it was messing up my perception of the subbass though. It still baffles me they didn't "fix" it.
@@Jrel Good to know. I guess it bothers me less because I don't expect any **emulation** that's IR-based to be perfect? I just expect them to be representational enough--close enough--to highlight the typical problems you'd encounter in the environment being emulated. While I do spend a lot of time producing and mixing on the Barefoot mid-fields in "Stephen's Mix Room", and also on those really fat Pelonis far-fields in the relatively dry-sounding "Archon Studio", I also still check a lot of stuff in the HD Linear bypass mode. Those three modes sound relatively "natural/good" to me, and show most of the detail I'm concerned about most of the time. All the other models I tend to flip through just to listen for things that stick out and are highlighted as problematic.
whatd you think about abbey road studio 3 and nashville by waves?
I haven't tried them because I disagree with their design philosophy. All of the "mix environment emulation" plugins like these are based in part on IR modeling (like in a convolution reverb). They're also trying to simulate some degree of timing-based intra-aural perception (of both speakers PLUS the room reflections) inside of your very binaural headphones. They're never going to be **perfect**. The reason I decided to try Slate VSX is because they're the only such solution out there that is built around the characteristics of the headphone itself. VSX comes with matching headphones. The models are designed to sound "correct" in THOSE headphones. By contrast, all the other similar plugins by Waves, etc. are not matched to the characteristics of any one headphone. A simulated room/speaker in those other plugs will sound VERY different depending on which exactly headphone model you're wearing. So how accurately can their emulations really be? How accurately can you trust the problem areas they're trying to highlight with each emulation?
❤❤
WOOHOO!
VSX looks amazing. I'm curious if you still use your pre-VSX studio headphones at all? I saw in a comment you now use the slate headphones from the start to end of a mix, but what about the production part? Or even listening to music/audio outside of production?
I exclusively work through the VSX system now. My HS8 monitors, my 10-inch subwoofer, and my Subpac have all been sitting in a closet for 9 months now, and I don't miss them at all.
@@Baphometrix haha wow they must be good headphones. very tempted to purchase!
@@Baphometrix I got the audeze LCD. Tossed all my room treatments and my HS8s (which are way to bright and harsh anyway).
Hey Baphy love your videos. It's become my daily thing to watch these. I don't mean to be rude but what pronouns do you go by?
She/her. I'm transgender female. But... I use **mostly** my old male voice and cadence and emphasis for these videos because sadly there's still a male bias in the technical audio world and in the producer world. Ask any woman in any engineering discipline how often they get sidelined by the guys in the room because of an unconscious bias that engineering is a man's game. I hold my ground in technical professions by talking and debating like the guys do. Meanwhile, I don't mind when people here on RUclips assume I'm a guy. My gender is irrelevant on RUclips. My ideas are all that matter.
@@Baphometrix ohh okay. I kinda thought that was the case but didn't want to assume anything. The male bias is a sad thing. Hope you get to be yourself soon in these fantastic videos.
Baphy, what about big kicks in techno where you don’t really have a sub Bassline?
Then you make big kicks. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking?
@@Baphometrix you said that small kicks are better for clubs because the pitch drop causes problems.
@@teknobryan Ah. You can make a "big sounding" kick that is also fairly short in duration and doesn't have a long tail that will reverberate and cause that comb-filtered "swell up" sound I pointed out in this video. The trick is to find that length in the subby tail portion where you're getting just enough of the "hint" of the boom/thud to **imply** the sense of bigness.
Or you can just not give a crap. Or you can decide that you **like** the sound of a big huge long washy kick that makes weird textures in a big reverberant space like a club.
The main thing is to be aware that a kick that sounds really tight and fat and heavy on your 6-inch nearfields in your home studio might sound VERY different on big stacks in a club. And it might behoove you to know what that's going to sound like. So you can make an informed decision about how to sound-design that kick and how to mix that kick. Or to reach for a different kick instead.
Last two episodes are fckn golden. Can anyone recommend room emulation software like this? I know waves and realphones. Vsx is too expensive for me.
FLUX:: Analyzer session? LUX:: Analyzer Live? FLUX:: Analyzer Multichannel ? Which version is yours？
The cheap version, lol. "Studio Session Analyzer", which comes in the bundle they call "Studio Session Pack".
41:07 why didn't you use a HPF @20 hz ?
Because that's a terrible practice. You really want to be careful with HP filters down in your low end. They affect the sub region ABOVE the filter point at 20 Hz in a variety of bad, undesirable ways. Even if you use a linear phase HPF. The only legit reason to use an HPF down somewhere in the sub/bass region is when you're recording midrange instruments or vocals, and your goal is to reduce the amount of ambient "rumble" that is included in the recorded signal.
@@Baphometrix Yeah, I learned the kick-fading trick kind of by accident trying this. Kick drum was lasting too long and I was getting that "rubbing" you were talking about in the video, so I tried high-passing the low-end of the kick to clean that area up and was met with some unbelievable filter ringing that actually extended the tail on the kick rather than cutting it. So, I just faded off the tail of the sample instead and it cleared everything up. Glad to see that information being more propagated, I'm part of a lot of amateur producer communities and you wouldn't believe how often I hear ringing, elongated kicks putting uncomfortable pressure on the low end of the mix, and it's like... low-frequency pressure but with no resolution. It just sounds totally oppressive; the kick-fading trick is far cleaner and higher-fidelity by comparison. Good job on these videos, I can't wait to see more, I do have more questions about the CTZ process from my own testing but I'mma wait for them to be answered by the videos you have planned. Great content! ^^;
@@shinon_shn Yep! That's an excellent anecdote and is **exactly** what happens all too often. Especially given the popular (but very WRONG) advice, IMO, to just reflexively slap a 20 HZ HPF on a bus or 2bus mix (or even on individual tracks).
@@Baphometrix what about using a double stacked 12db/oct filter to still get a 24db cutoff but without a 3db boost at the region? I figure that still won’t counter the ringing but it wouldn’t cause a boost?
@@Baphometrix What if there is excessive amount of information in that bottom end that I want to reduce when I am otherwise very satisfied with the timbre of my sub/kick? Would you recommend shelving rather than filtering?
Yeah fam. I really appreciate your videos. Where can I send you a gift at?
I doubt Baphy will accept gifts, but her music is great if you want to listen 💯
Thanks for the kind thoughts, but I don't monetize. It's not necessary. Just enjoy and spread the word.
You sold me the slate vsx
Holy bible level
This is why I cut the sub to my kicks and add my own.
good shit
Bapho
Can you do a video on getting the right mix between kick and bass please?
Watch the series it explains everything
@@kalegarner6582 not that detail